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Sexual reproduction in the plant parasite Phytophthora capsici Leonian requires the interaction of two distinct mating types, A1 and A2. Co-occurrence of these mating types can enhance the genetic diversity of P. capsici and alter its virulence or resistance characteristics. Using an intersimple sequence repeat (ISSR) screen of microsatellite diversity, we identified, cloned, and sequenced a novel 1121-base pair (bp) fragment specific to the A1 mating type of P. capsici. Primers Pcap-1 and Pcap-2 were designed from this DNA fragment to specifically detect the A1 mating type. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using these primers amplified an expected 997-bp fragment from known A1 mating types, but yielded a 508-bp fragment from known A2 mating types. This PCR-based assay could be adapted to accurately and rapidly detect the co-occurrence of A1 and A2 P. capsici mating types from field material.
To explore genetic differentiation and the genetic relationships of Phytophthora sojae in Anhui Province, the inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) technique was used to analyze the genetic diversity of P. sojae. One hundred and sixty ISSR fragments were observed, including 129 (80.6%) polymorphic bands. This suggested that abundant genetic diversity existed among P. sojae in Anhui Province. The pairwise genetic similarity coefficients among the 62 strains ranged from 0.72 to 0.96, with a mean value of 0.85, indicating that there was a high level of genetic variation. Phytophthora sojae strains were divided into five clusters based on neighbor-joining (NJ) analysis, and the clustering was not related to geographic source, according to Mantel’s test (r = 0.3938). In addition, the clustering of strains from the same geographical source had little relationship to the year of collection. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that 16.65% of the genetic variation was derived from the collection area and 83.35% of the genetic variation was within-population variation. The genetic flow between different geographical sources ranged from 0.623 to 2.773, with a mean of 1.325, suggesting that gene exchange was frequent. Genetic distance and the genetic differentiation coefficient were not related to spatial distance.